BITESIZE | The Crucial Importance of Strength Training, How To Make Healthy Habits Stick & Living a Strong & Healthy Life | Dr Gabrielle Lyon #509

My guest today believes that the single biggest problem with our health these days is not that we carry too much fat but that we don’t carry enough muscle, and that if we start to focus and prioritise our largest organ – our muscle – we can burn more fat, improve our body composition, decrease our risk of disease and increase our energy levels. Feel Better Live More Bitesize is my weekly podcast for your mind, body, and heart. Each week I’ll be featuring inspirational stories and practical tips from some of my former guests. Today’s clip is from episode 418 of the podcast with Dr Gabrielle Lyon – an osteopathic doctor who is board certified in family medicine. She earned her undergraduate degree in Human Nutrition from the University of Illinois and completed a research & clinical fellowship in Nutritional Science and Geriatrics at Washington University. She is the founder of the Institute for Muscle Centric-Medicine™ and the author of Forever Strong: A New, Science-backed Strategy for Aging Well. In this clip, she shares why muscle is critical for our health and our metabolism, how to make new healthy habits stick, and why strength training can help us live longer, stronger, and better lives. Thanks to our sponsor https://www.drinkag1.com/livemore Support the podcast and enjoy Ad-Free episodes. Try FREE for 7 days on Apple Podcasts https://apple.co/feelbetterlivemore For other podcast platforms go to https://fblm.supercast.com Show notes and the full podcast are available at drchatterjee.com/418 DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Rangan Chatterjee?

  Welcome to Feel Better Live More Bite Size, your weekly dose of positivity and optimism to get you ready for the weekend. Today's clip is from episode 418 of the podcast with Dr Gabrielle Lyon. Gabrielle believes that the single biggest problem with our health these days is not that we carry too much fat, but that we don't carry enough muscle. In this clip, she shares why muscle is critical for our health and our metabolism, how to make new healthy habits stick, and why strength training could help us live longer, stronger, and better lives.

• 0:49Rangan Chatterjee?

  So Dr Lyon, you believe that all of us need to be focused on the health of our muscles, whether we want to burn fat, live longer, improve our hormonal profile, increase our energy, or reduce the risk of getting sick in the future. You believe that our muscle health is really, really important. Why?

• 1:09Speaker 01

  If you were to ask me, what do I believe is most important? Is it food, or is it training, or is it, name something, ice bath, etc? I would say the influence of exercise trumps nearly everything because of its influence on all other body systems. That is how impactful training is for people. The quality of our muscle is the cornerstone for overall health and wellbeing. And quite frankly, it's the organ of longevity. There's nothing more important than skeletal muscle. It is different than this idea of looking good in a bikini and athletic performance, which is, you know, when we think about skeletal muscle, that's often what we think about.

• 1:54Speaker 01

  I'd love to start with a story that will really highlight where this came from. I did my fellowship in geriatrics and nutritional sciences. In order for me to do a two-year clinical fellowship, I had to work as a geriatrician and get my fellowship training in geriatrics.

• 2:13Speaker 01

  And in the mornings, early morning, I did obesity medicine research. And during the day, I would see patients in the hospital, in the nursing home, in memory and aging clinics. In the evening, I would go back to doing obesity medicine research. And one of the things that we were looking at was body composition and brain function. And, you know, there's always that one patient, right? I'm sure you've had that one patient that changed everything for you. And for me, it was a woman named, we'll just call her Betty. She was a mom of three kids in her mid 50s. She had always struggled with the same 20 pounds. We know a ton of people like that. 20 pounds over a lifetime, always put herself last,

• 2:58Speaker 01

  showed up for her family, showed up for her friends, and did exactly what the medical community had told her, which was eat less and exercise more. And quite frankly, I gave her the same advice. We imaged her brain. And her brain looked like the beginning of an Alzheimer's brain in her mid 50s. As you can imagine, it really struck me. I realized that she'd done everything we had told her to. And in the process, she lost weight, just as many people lose weight, go through a process of yo-yo dieting.

• 3:42Speaker 01

  But she also lost skeletal muscle and destroyed her metabolism and impacted her brain. So I started thinking, okay, how is this the standard of care? So I started to really begin to put these pieces together. What was the one thing that all these patients had in common? In the nursing home, in the hospital rounds, in the dementia unit? It wasn't that they were over fat. It was that they had unhealthy skeletal muscle first and that we had been trying to fix this obesity epidemic for the last 50 years. And all of the things that ride along with obesity, Alzheimer's, cardiovascular disease, you name it.

• 4:26Speaker 01

  Hypertension, insulin resistance. These are not diseases of obesity. In fact, these were diseases of skeletal muscle first. Insulin resistance, insulin is a hormone released from the pancreas that moves blood sugar out of the bloodstream into the cells. And I realized I had this aha moment that in order to get people healthy, and if we really truly cared about longevity, we had to course correct the way in which we were thinking and shift our focus from the pathology of fat to the building, the maintaining, the cultivation of the health of skeletal muscle. And that's really where this concept of muscle centric medicine came from. And of course, I'm going to talk to you

• 5:11Speaker 01

  about exactly what skeletal muscle does, why it's an organ system. But I think it's important that everyone put themselves in the framework of understanding that we've had a narrative of constantly focusing on all these other diseases as if they're out there. But truly, these diseases begin in our 30s.

• 5:30Rangan Chatterjee?

  It's a powerful story. And yes, we all have, I think, as physicians, as healthcare professionals, as personal trainers, we all have that one patient, that one client that started to change things in our brain, that made us question some of the things that we've been taught, or certainly question some of the ways in which we were practicing. But you mentioned that Alzheimer's in the brain. You also mentioned the importance of skeletal muscle. Now, I think for many people, they're going to go, well, yeah, I get it. Skeletal muscle is important. But what on earth has it got to do with the health of our brain?

• 6:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a really great question. You originally asked me, why do I believe, why is my working hypothesis that skeletal muscle is the cornerstone for health and wellness? Let's talk about what skeletal muscle does. Number one, it is an organ system. It is an organ system that you have voluntary control over. Quite simply, this means it's the only organ system you can directly do something about with conscious thought. You cannot exercise your liver. We're unable to tell our thyroid to produce T4. We are unable to tell other organ systems exactly what to do. Skeletal muscle as an organ system is under direct voluntary control.

• 6:54Speaker 01

  Muscle has probably the biggest influence, by the way, on our entire homeostasis. Over time, skeletal muscle that is not exercised and unhealthy ends up looking like a marbled steak rather than a fillet, which is exactly what it should look like. It becomes less efficient at utilizing energy. Skeletal muscle is one of the primary sites for mitochondria. Mitochondria, which I know that you've talked about, often is the powerhouses of the cell. It's where we generate energy. Skeletal muscle is a primary site for fatty acid oxidation. People are worried about their cholesterol and they're worried about triglycerides. Skeletal muscle is a primary site for utilization.

• 7:38Speaker 01

  When we think about metabolism and metabolic regulation, skeletal muscle is the primary site and it's 40% of our body. This is just one aspect from a metabolic perspective. When you talk about brain function and the health of skeletal muscle, if you do not have healthy skeletal muscle, you do not have a healthy metabolism. The body becomes insulin resistant, just as the brain becomes insulin resistant. You know, Alzheimer's is often thought of as type 3 diabetes in the brain, which means our metabolic health has a direct impact on our brain function.

• 8:17Speaker 01

  And we know that the smaller the waistline, the less body fat an individual has, the better, over time, the brain will function.

• 8:30Rangan Chatterjee?

  It's just remarkable to think about all of the different things that skeletal muscle influences. Yeah, as we discussed the first time you came on my show, many of us for years have just thought about it as a physical thing, you know, dumb muscle. It's, you know, a bit more if you want to look big and be a bodybuilder, but otherwise it doesn't really matter. One of the key points we mentioned in our first conversation was that as we get older... Above the age of 30, unless we're doing something about it, we are losing our skeletal muscle every year. Right. So listeners of this show will know that I do a five minute strength workout every morning

• 9:12Rangan Chatterjee?

  whilst my coffee is brewing. Now, you may argue that five minutes is not enough.

• 9:16Speaker 01

  I'll take it.

• 9:17Rangan Chatterjee?

  But I would say I keep in pretty good shape from doing that now. Over the last two years, things have changed. As I have got older and I look in detail at the research on movement and exercise, I'm like, hey, Rong, and listen, if you want to be a capable, strong, resilient human being, you've got to move your body. So I am now committing to one hour's movement a day. Right. And I love these daily things because if it's daily, it's a habit. Now, it doesn't mean I'm going to run every day, right? Some days it will be a one hour fast walk, other times it will be a run or whatever it might be.

• 10:01Rangan Chatterjee?

  But by making it a rule, by making it a standard, that I'm accountable to myself and I want to tie that in to this time of year. Right. Even if people just commit to one thing and they do it, I think that is the best thing you can do. You give yourself evidence that you do what you say you're going to do.

• 10:28Speaker 01

  You are on to something, my friend. And what you're also on to is shifting a narrative and a way of thinking of how we have to age. Does this take time commitment? Does it take physical effort? Is it sometimes uncomfortable because the last thing you want to be doing is pushups and squats in your kitchen? Yeah, it's a drag potentially. But the outcome is so beneficial when you are leveraging this organ of longevity from a lifetime trajectory of, it's like putting money in the bank. You are doing what you need to do. It's an organ system. It is an organ system designed for movement.

• 11:13Rangan Chatterjee?

  One of the things I enjoyed the most about your latest book Forever Strong was how you covered the psychological aspects of change as well as the physical ones. Because what I'm writing about, the things I think about more are these mindset issues. Because actually, once you've got the foundation of mindset right, I find that those downstream behaviours of food and movement, whatever it might be, are so much easier for people to incorporate into their lives. I'm all for giving people information. And in our first conversation together, you gave a masterclass in protein and resistance

• 11:56Rangan Chatterjee?

  training. But I think people even with that information don't always manage to make change. So let's imagine a scenario, and given the time of year, it's January, and someone is thinking, this year, something is going to be different. And in my view, if you don't take a different approach, why is it that 2024 is going to be any different than 2023, or 2022, or 2021? So instead of trying to buy a new diet plan, or a new strength training, or whatever it might be, sure, do that, but you need to go a little bit further upstream as well.

• 12:34Rangan Chatterjee?

  So can you relate what we're talking about now to people wanting to create healthy behaviours?

• 12:42Speaker 01

  I have a great solution for this. Are you ready? The solution is we set standards, we don't set goals. Standards for how we show up, standards for how we execute. You no longer need to set goals. If you have a weight loss goal, this sets you up for failure. The first thing that people should do is set a standard for how they want to show up. For me, I show up, I train. It is a standard that I have set for myself. It is not a goal. And when we shift away from goals, because goals are variable, and you have an opportunity to meet that goal, or you have an opportunity to fail at that goal.

• 13:25Speaker 01

  But when you set a standard for the way in which you function in your everyday life, and I encourage people to write it down. What is the standard that you are going to set for yourself? And then execute on that standard. Know your weaknesses. Don't be surprised by them. Plan for them. They're coming. And they're totally predictable. You cannot be shocked by your own human nature.

• 13:52Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 13:55Rangan Chatterjee?

  Getting to know yourself better. Understanding yourself, knowing your limitations, knowing your patterns, knowing when you go off track, right? This is really where it's at if you want to make changes.

• 14:10Speaker 01

  I think it's really important that we understand.

• 14:16Speaker 01

  I will say this first. That motivation comes and goes and you have to plan for that. You cannot be shocked by the fact that you will not be motivated. I was able to address all of that stuff many years ago. There are many times now I do not feel like training. I have two very little children. My husband is a first year surgical resident, which means he works 100 hours a week. Here's what I do. I am not surprised by the fact that I am not motivated to train. What I do is I have it all set up. For example, I have training partners that I know are going to be meeting me at the gym. I am not going to let them down. I would never not say I'm going to show up for something and then not show up for it.

• 15:00Speaker 01

  I know that when I get off of a plane, I will go and I'll train. I don't feel like it. I'm already trying to every Saturday we do this or every Sunday we do this big group workout. Every Saturday night I'm trying to talk myself out of how I'm not going to be going and showing up for Sunday.

• 15:17Speaker 01

  Yet we're all surprised that we're going to start on a program January 1st and then we're shocked by the fact that we're not motivated by in two or three weeks. Plan for that. You're not going to feel motivated. You are going to feel motivated the first week. Failure to understand and plan for the fact that is absolutely going to fall off is a complete misstep. You plan for that. You have your teammates in place that you are going to show up for because if you're not willing to do it for yourself, you will definitely show up to do it for another person.

• 15:51Speaker 01

  And yeah, that's all I can say about that. I am definitely not motivated a lot of the time, but I still will show up. The brain does a lot of things. The brain likes comfort. The brain tells us not to do all these things, but the brain is just an organ that pumps out thoughts. That's just what the brain does. It doesn't mean that they're relevant. It means that one can be discerning. You can have all the thoughts that you want, but when you commit to an action, you don't wait on motivation. You don't have to force yourself into doing anything. You might have a moment of negotiation. You took action. You're much more likely to take action in the future and you build upon that.

• 16:31Rangan Chatterjee?

  For that person who wants to get into strength training, for someone who's never done anything, and let's say they're in their 40s, how would you advise that they start getting into resistance training?

• 16:46Speaker 01

  Well, you had mentioned that you have a great coach, and I think now that we have access to online coaches and there's just a whole host of information, find a modality that works and be under the guidance of someone or at least curate information. There's tons out there because when you start, you are going to have much more of a response than someone who is who has already been training. The just doing basic body weight stuff like pushups or squats or moving your body or doing lunges. This is an amazing place to start. You are doing something. Again, when we talk about resistance training, moving your body weight would be considered resistance training. Then you graduate to bands. If you want to

• 17:28Speaker 01

  use bands, I think that that is very, very, very helpful. It is easy to do at home. And then after you graduate from bands, and let's say you are doing things, I think being able to squat, get off up off the floor, we are training for life. Being able to do a pushup, you have to be able to fall well. You have to be able to push yourself up off of the ground. Let's say you don't want to do any of those things, then you pick up a couple heavy bags and you walk and you carry them. Eventually you progress to kettlebells. What are actions that you do within your normal life that will allow you to get better at doing those things?

• 18:05Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 18:05Speaker 01

  We know that people have to carry groceries. Remember, we're not training to become better at exercise. We are training to become better at life. You are doing actions that allow you to become better at life. We know that it is very critical to be able to get off the floor if you were to fall. Begin to think about things within life and put actions to those things. And what happens is over time, you can continue to increase the amount. So let's say when you start, you can do 10 squats. Then you can do 20 and you continue to push yourself.

• 18:46Speaker 01

  There are a whole host of opportunities and options. And there's only one wrong way to do it, by the way. And that's by not doing it.

• 18:56Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, I circle that quote in your book. There is one slam dunk way to exercise wrong. Don't do it at all.

• 19:04Speaker 01

  And it's also not if challenges are going to happen, it's when. It's not an if thing, it's a when thing. You train for life and you train for sickness. And I know that that sounds morbid, but the more healthy muscle mass you have, the more resilient you are going to be in midlife and later on. And the time to take action is now.

• 19:29Rangan Chatterjee?

  But something also about strength training or exercise or training full stop that I don't think people talk about enough, how it makes you feel, right? When you can lift something heavy, when you're able to go on a one hour hike in the hills and you're able to do that, you come back and you've given yourself a shot of resilience. You feel like a capable, strong human being.

• 19:59Rangan Chatterjee?

  We can talk about what having muscle mass does to lower inflammation, improve the health of your immune system, lower your risk of cancer, all those kinds of things. Great. But it also does something arguably more important than any of those things. It gives you confidence in yourself.

• 20:16Speaker 01

  I know. Isn't it amazing? Muscle is the cornerstone to longevity. And what is longevity? It's not just living longer. It's living happier. It's living more capable. It's being able to fulfill what you intended to fulfill. You're absolutely right. I have never heard a patient say to me, you know, I regret being strong and capable. I regret that. Never in the history of ever. And if people understand as they are going into the new year, let's say you don't like exercise, fine. Think about how you are going to cultivate yourself to become better at life.

• 20:56Rangan Chatterjee?

  Hope you enjoyed that bite-sized clip. Do spread the love by sharing this episode with your friends and family. And if you want more, why not go back and listen to the original full conversation with my guest. If you enjoyed this episode, I think you will really enjoy my bite-sized Friday email. It's called the Friday Five. And each week, I share things that I do not share on social media. It contains five short doses of positivity, articles of books that I'm reading, quotes that I'm thinking about, exciting research I've come across, and so much more. I really think you're going to love it. The goal is for it to be a small, yet powerful dose of feel-good to get you ready for the weekend.

• 21:38Rangan Chatterjee?

  You can sign up for it free of charge at drchattity.com/FridayFive. Hope you have a wonderful weekend. Make sure you have pressed subscribe and I'll be back next week with my long-form conversation on Wednesday and the latest episode of Bite Science next Friday.